Friday Thinking, is a playful reflection of the week's pondering moments.
It is dedicated to illuminating that the next tomorrow won't be like today's yesterday.
I've been pondering the idea of public discourse - of civil speech. This is an issue that's been gaining-share of my attention lately. I have managed a small community listserv for almost 24 years. It took about a decade before it required a clear statement of basic 'rules of the road'. The guidelines aimed to support a sense of 'community spirit' and common ground for the use of this 'new' community technology.
Remember, in January 2001, not everyone had a personal email address (now almost everyone has more than 1).
The vision of the listserv is:
to help sustain and steward a generative sense of Local community, and to provide a means of communication in the spirit of strengthening how local residents in our local neighborhoods can connect with one another.
Its aims are very humble - to enable simple, useful, exchanges that foster a recognition of our neighbors as our neighbors in a local community.
It took bit longer, before the issue of 'moderating' someone became a concrete issue.
What is 'moderation'? For a social-media (including an old one like a listserv or bulletin-board), it is the ability to 'park' a post by a member, in order for the post to be viewed by a moderator, to judge whether it meets the 'rules of the road' and released to the list or deleted.
In order to moderate, fairly and dispassionately, a set of 'rules of the road' are needed as the basis of accounting a dispassionate and fair judgment.
And all human judgements are fallible. What enables trust in such judgments? Ultimately, it is the good-faith of the referee(s) to provide their best effort to give an honest account as evidence of fair judgments.
And we are more likely to trust a social system, when honest evidence can correct errors of judgment or at least will improve future judgments
And these are complex time we live in. We face profound challenges that anticipate fundamental change in our lives - like the phase-transition of when ice becomes water. It feels like accelerations of social diversities of being and becoming, of belonging and being different and ever moore moments of choice or reaction.
There's a challenge in the concept of applying 'rules of the road' to social media. All 'letters of the law' are by definition imperfect in application, to any real, concrete and thus complex social situation. Even vigilant faith in the adherence to the 'spirit of the law' by the referee will inevitably be incomplete and imperfect. And also, of course, all sets of rules can be gamed.
feeling-
reasoned -
with spirit of -
entangles -
quantum-super-position -
of complex -
anticipation-trajectories -
grounded together -
by value -
attract-enactors -
How does one account for a measure of good faith? What conditions are best for stewarding good faith civility. And this leads me to ponder the conditions of public discourse.
Public discourse isn't just speaking out in public. Public discourse promotes good faith when it is considered speech - respect-full speech. Respect includes the respecting effort required by the community in order 'to pay' attention.
Considered speech is more generative of considered attention returned in good faith.
Public discourse is better enabled within a trusted commons supported by all, for all. In such conditions, public discourse can enable improved collective intelligence for exploring the problem and solution spaces. And therefore a community is enriched with a wisdom distilled through a diversity of views.
This is a complex social obligation - like a broad and much less formal - call to the duty of serving on a Jury - and much more formal - than casual gossip with a neighbor.
In some ways, the flourishing of our lives can be measured by the generativity of social ecologies. Considered speech and considered attention is a vital ingredient of a generative social ecology.
And the art of moderation is the challenge of gardening for a generative community commons.
Time-Space-Gravity
We are all enmeshed in our individual mycelium of family-friend-work. And the network-interstitium of our social-medias. And all of it must be dynamically attended too.
And yes - 'delete' is a 21st century skill. And it's a paradox - because most messages are NOT of interest to most members. And always very likely the message IS of interest to someone.
A listserv can help any-one person can offer-provide-interact-exchange with any one other know-or-unknown person. Like a call in the wild.
And delete-as-an-art is a power-tool for enabling this small benefit to provide a huge benefit to the whole.
The listserv functions well as a type of social practical search function (like a local-community Google), for certain types of practical community supporting opportunities, including:
buy-sell-give-need-found-lost-recommend-alert-event-activities.
When each post has a clear subject line - delete works wonders.
The listserv also provides ways for residents to self-coordinate social activity.
There's an informality of trust that arises in a local community through such humble purposes and technology. And that is it's purpose - to serve as a platform for over 1170 members that is generative of social trust. To grow social capital. This is a hidden value under a veil of simple transactions.
The Gravity of Public Discourse
A local community listserv-technology faces inherent constraints related to how well it can serve as a platform for public discourse. Some basic 'rules of the road' are important - public discourse has more gravity:
Any issue being offered for public discourse - has to be of interest to 'the public' - of 'public concern' to those residing in the local community.
Members must mindfully respect the requirement of good-faith, of considered speech and considered attention.
Members should respect the attention (time-effort) others must pay to hear and engage with the topic.
And all posts should be connected to the topic and for benefit of all, rather than quips, rants, unrelated opinions. If not then direct replies are appropriate.
And perhaps a healthy listserv also sustains a practice of regular moderation jubilees - enabling an evolving social wisdom of community spirit.
mhm
